Urban Myths About India’s Megacities, Debunked

India’s cities are bursting at the seams as tens of millions of migrant workers pour in from rural regions looking for work, overcrowding the streets and slums and accelerating urban decay in once-grand cities like Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata.

It’s a familiar tale of urbanization, often-told through documentaries, books, movies and newspaper articles. But when it comes to the recent evolution of South Asia’s biggest cities, it’s just not true.

A new World Bank report took a close look at urbanization in South Asia this century and found that while some of the aphorisms may be true in other parts of the world, they do not usually apply to India. Urbanization in India and the rest of South Asia is happening in a unique way and at a different pace.

The rise of the region’s super cities is not as ugly as some imagine but it’s still not pretty and is already probably hurting growth, the report said.

Official government data suggest only around a third of Indians live in cities, making the other 66% of the population rural. The World Bank report says India’s urban populace is actually much higher as New Delhi’s way of defining what is urban may be outdated. Using the agglomeration index–a globally standardized measurement that looks at population density and sprawl beyond official city borders–as much as 55% of India’s populace could be urban.

“Much urbanization has been hidden,” the report said. “A growing number of people in the region live in places that possess strong urban characteristics but that are not officially recognized as urban.”

Share of population classified as urban, 2010.

World Bank

2Rural migrants are powering a population explosion in the cities. Share on Twitter

India’s rate of urbanization has actually been surprisingly low, well behind what has happened in China this century or in Japan and South Korea earlier. South Asia’s urban population grew only around 1% a year in the 11 years through 2011. Over the same period urban populations grew almost 2.5% a year in East Asia.

Meanwhile only a small part of the city growth is from migration. The World Bank report estimates that more than 73% of the growth in the years between 2001 and 2011 came from natural population growth (basically just city people having kids) and the reclassification of former rural areas as urban.

While India’s cities have always been among the most crowded in the world, its metropolitan areas have actually become less dense on average as they sprawl. It is the suburbs that are growing rapidly, not the city centers and people tend to be more spread out on the outskirts, the report said.

India’s two largest cities illustrate what is happening. In the 10 years to 2011, the population of Delhi grew 1.9% a year while the population in the suburb of Gurgaon expanded 4.5% a year, the report said. Greater Mumbai’s official population rose only 0.4% a year during that period, while the population of Thane on the financial capital’s outskirts, grew seven times faster at 3.1% a year.

In Kolkata, the number of people living just outside the city is now more than twice the number of people that live within the city.

Map of Kolkata in 2010 showing built-up urban area located outside official boundaries and chart showing built-up urban area and populations by proportion of major Indian cities, 2010

Despite India’s strong gross domestic product growth, economic activity in big city centers has literally dimmed relative to the suburbs. The World Bank looked at the artificial light detected on satellite images of India over the years as a way to measure economic activity and population. It showed that the burbs are booming and there is less growth within the cities. One World Bank survey mentioned in the report showed the number of manufacturing jobs in India’s metropolitan cores has fallen between 1998 and 2005 by more than 15%.

“The pattern of relative stagnation at the cores of many of South Asia’s major cities and rapid growth on their peripheries can be partly explained by the process of manufacturing deconcentration from the centers and toward the outskirts of these cities without the emergence of suitable replacement industries,” the report said.

“The dimming of lights at the cores of cities such as Delhi suggests that services have not been sufficient to plug the gap left by the exodus of organizedmanufacturing firms.”

Growth in employment in Indian metropolitan cores and their peripheries by sector 1998-2005

While some thinkers, including Mahatma Gandhi, have imagined an economy where people would be happy to stay in their villages, city living is usually much better for economies and people.

When cities blossom the right way it means people are moving from low-productivity, low paying, farm jobs to high productivity manufacturing and service jobs. Cities are efficient clusters of labor, capital and manufacturing and crucial for the exchange of ideas and innovation. They help raise incomes and standards of living.

Urbanization is crucial for sustainable development but problems arise when infrastructure does not keep up with growth in the population. Some of the world most successful cities are also among the most crowded.

“What separates world-class cities like New York and London from South Asian cities is not that they have conquered congestion—it is that they have much higher prosperity and livability at comparable or lower levels of congestion,” the report said.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.